Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Philippa - an opera [blog 3]

As mentioned in my previous blogs on this subject [Philippa blog
I, 16 September 2012 and blog 2, 18 September], I have been talking to people for some years now about an opera
on Philippa Duke Schuyler, the Harlem-born concert pianist who died in Vietnam rescuing schoolchildren in 1967. But now I've decided to work on the piece in the
open, via my
blog, until such time as someone commissions it, or the libretto (or
opera) is finished. Below I've written a complete if rough synopsis which has placed the action mostly within the years 1966-67, ie. in a tighter time-frame to increase the urgency of Philippa's
need to find a solution to her life's dilemma.

Philippa - an opera, ROUGH SYNOPSIS

5 October Amendments in red

Cast

JODY – mezzo

GEORGE – bass

CARDINAL SPELLMAN / Mr PERFECT QUALIFICATIONS – tenor

PHILIPPA – soprano

THE CHAPERONE - mezzo

SERVICEMAN / JACQUES (AFRICAN POLITICIAN) / MILITARY
LIAISON - bass

SERVICEMAN / SOLDIER – tenor

VIET CONG COMMANDER / PRIEST – baritone

YOUNG PHILIPPA – child soprano

VIETNAMESE CHILD - child soprano [or is this the same
singer as for YOUNG PHILIPPA?]

CHORUS, CHILDREN’S CHORUS

In English, French, and Vietnamese

Prologue

A Pontifical Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, 18
May 1967. We hear messages of condolence from luminaries of American public
life – “to our beautiful black sister” from Ella
Fitzgerald and Sammy Davis Jr., “to a fine American” from President
Johnson…

The bereaved parents GEORGE SCHUYLER, the
African-American journalist, and JODY (JOSEPHINE COGDELL), the wealthy white
Texan, sit together. While the organist plays Philippa’s music, CARDINAL
SPELLMAN mounts the pulpit. HE says they have come to commemorate the short
life of Philippa Duke Schuyler, “a polymath”, pianist, composer, the second
American [check] journalist to be killed in Vietnam when her helicopter plunged
into the sea off Ðà Nãng”. JODY flares up in grief asking, “How can she rest in
peace when her potential lies unfulfilled?” Her husband tries to comfort her
but is rebuffed. “What are we celebrating?” she demands to know. The
CONGREGATION raises its collective voice in affirmation of Philippa’s life, but
is drowned out by the rotation noise of helicopter blades, and the tape of a
Mayday call.

Act I Vietnam,
2 Sep -14 Oct, 1966

(i)

35 year-old PHILIPPA arrives
in Saigon; there are gun emplacements and other signs of war. She is fascinated
by a place which does not require of her “a centre of gravity”. THE CHAPERONE
from the Embassy briefs her (a personal explanation of the war and some rules
of behaviour). Oblivious to danger, PHILIPPA resents her chaperone’s restrictions
because they remind her of Jody’s constant instructions at home. At home in New
York she can’t act freely because ultimately she was always meant to be ‘America’s
bi-racial genius’, a ‘beacon of hope’ in black and white worlds, to neither of
which, however, she feels she fully belongs. SHE
knows that while she is away in Vietnam, Jody will be back in New York reliving
the odyssey of baby Philippa with the scrapbooks and reminiscences Jody has
kept since Philippa was a baby; the scrapbooks PHILIPPA resents because they
were meant to prescribe her life’s journey in minute detail. “They tell me what to do, but not what I must be; they tell
me what to achieve, but not what I must become.”

(ii)

Checking out the Saigon
performance venue: a scene with AFRICAN-AMERICAN SERVICE MUSICIANS
(SERVICEMEN). But PHILIPPA can only play classical music even here with these
servicemen who assume she can ‘swing’. THEY inhabit a
world that it is alien to her, even though she doesn’t relate to the whites. Frustrated,
SHE reflects that she has looked everywhere for the perfect place for her, and she thirsts for knowledge of the servicemen’s world like
a parched outsider. SHE relates how her parents met in Harlem in the
1920s and got married, hoping to make the world a less-divisive place. What THE
SERVICEMEN tell her indicates how little has changed since then; they regard
the white US servicemen as enemy [‘Charlie’] and the white servicemen hold them
in the same contempt. THEY are amazed by her voracious thirst for knowledge,
little suspecting the extent to which it diverts her deep-seated tensions. THEY
offer to give her a lift up-country to see some action.

(iii)

While sightseeing PHILIPPA gives her CHAPERONE the slip
and discovers freedom (she can put on an aí daò and blend into the crowd,
escaping physically (“No-one sees me”), if not psychically). THE SERVICEMEN pick
her up for her trip.

(iv)

In a hamlet in the countryside SHE stays the night after
the SERVICEMEN have left. The VIET CONG come through. She overhears the
COMMANDER speaking (after the fractured English and
even fracturedVietnamese, the first fluent Vietnamese she has heard since arriving):
“Chúng ta sẽ đánh đuõỉ bọn giạc ngoại xâm
ra khoỉ đát nủởc” [which Philippa translates in Act II as ‘we will kick the
foreigners out of our country’] and realises she has been taken for Vietnamese
and left alone: “I can blend in here.” But identity has always been a torment.
Her palpable relief at being able to “blend in” reveals that she has never felt
at home anywhere else before, not when feted by Carnegie Hall audiences; not
when regarded as an example to little American girls everywhere, nor hailed as
the pride of Harlem...

(v)

PHILIPPA expresses her new-found freedom in new
composition [cadenza I]. She can
incorporate Vietnamese music, but the CHAPERONE, venting resentment of
Philippa’s “disobedience”, tells her the embassy wants her to play classics in
her concerts – even here she cannot escape branding. And she concedes that her
“absorption” of Vietnamese culture may only be
play-acting – “play-acting: the irritating habit of a lifetime!” SHE gives
a “well-behaved” performance.

(vi)

A priest she met at the concert has invited her to his
orphanage in Hué, “a short helicopter ride from Ðà Nãng”. HE admired her book Jungle Saints about priests in Africa risking their lives to alleviate
suffering in leprosariums, war-zones, slave labour camps... And wants to
know if she has grasped at this as a personal mission.
Then HE introduces PHILIPPA to the ‘orphans’, the CHILDREN of US servicemen and
Vietnamese women. SHE is entranced: who are they? Are they wanted? Whose
history are they being taught? What do they need?

(vii)

Back in Saigon, the CHAPERONE brings PHILIPPA a telegram
from Jody [are Jody and The Chaperone the same singer or just same voice type?].
Jody wants Philippa home. She is meant to be a professional musician (and, as
it is always understood, an advertisement for the promise of mixed marriage). PHILIPPA
doesn’t want to leave – she has discovered children who are between cultures
just like she was, but aircraft engines (or the call of the piano?) start up.
She goes.

Act II New
York, 1966-7

(i)

The war is merely a report back in New York, but Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr’s complaints (on the radio?) about the war detracting from Civil
Rights start GEORGE on one of his hobbyhorses; how the African-American does
not need special pleading, ie. Civil Rights. [To George, the “Negro Art Hokum”
was always appropriated by the ‘sympathetic whites’ who nevertheless “still
wanted us to beat tom-toms and wave rabbits’ feet. It’s got to become
unremarkable when we write a book or compose a concerto.”]

Meanwhile JODY is again mapping out Philippa’s future.
This includes settling her down with
a boyfriend after all the rejects who had less than “perfect
qualifications” and playing the major venues, but PHILIPPA flares up: Jody’s
dreams are unrealistic. She will not play those major halls again – the white
audiences know she’s black (and no longer young, no longer cute and no longer
politically safe). It’s all very well for George to think we should not segregate
ourselves, claims PHILIPPA, but the whites do it for us – unless she passes
herself off as someone else (and she has passed herself off as southern
European!) The concerts George organises for her with the John Birch Society
are galling to her. They ignore her as they unselfconsciously make racist
remarks. And though George (the John Birchers’ token black) may deny it, the
way she saw black GIs (the Servicemen) treated in Vietnam awakened her to
discrimination, an added frustration for her now because she sees clearly why mainstream America fell away from her (although JODY
is at pains to believe that America has not!)

As often happens in times of stress, JODY’s reminiscences
‘conjure’ the YOUNG PHILIPPA of the past, as she was in the 1940s, the little
star, proving the greatness that can result from a ‘mixed-race’ marriage. SHE
and GEORGE relive some of the excitement of the Harlem Renaissance when it
seemed that African-Americans would break into the American
mainstream via the arts, when George still had some fight. YOUNG
PHILIPPA plays the piano while JODY re-reads the scrapbooks that plotted
Philippa’s every step of progress. When JODY remembers, however, the way
Philippa was struck dumb when presented with the books on her 13th
birthday the playing stops. YOUNG PHILIPPA is presented
with them: “Am I merely a project?” she says.

JODY is furious that Philippa now wants to devote her
energies to “writing a book about the Amerasian orphans”. JODY: “Our daughter
and her morbid attraction for war zones and conflict.” But she knows that right
now Philippa would rather be at war, the perfect environment for her
tempestuous urges.

(ii)

PHILIPPA has met the man with “perfect qualifications”
and bedded him. MR PERFECT QUALIFICATIONS discovers her new-found Catholicism
and is bemused given her sexual aggressiveness. His scepticism offends her; she
is in earnest. Her search for faith, for mysticism, for peace results in a
composition, another cadenza. But what
is her musical personality? YOUNG PHILIPPA joins her in the cadenza and, in her
unspoiled simplicity, we sense the innocence Young Philippa enjoyed when in the
cocoon of the Schuyler household, before white audiences woke up to the fact that she is “no longer young, no longer
cute, and no longer politically safe”.

VARIOUS MEN IN PHILIPPA’S PAST (CHORUS) back up the
doubts of Mr Perfect Qualifications. Acknowledging her fame, THEY never want to
hear of her again, have tired of her strident demands, deplored this ‘mess’ of
a human being who presented herself as different things to each of them. One of
them in particular (JACQUES) mourns the child Philippa aborted (“our child”) because
he might have proven her to be “black”. Another, the
SOLDIER she recently met in Vietnam is disconcerted by the bitterness that is
being expressed. “You’ll see,” say the others. “We will drive out the
alien” – PHILIPPA remembers the words of the Viet Cong soldier who sat on her
bed in a Vietnam hamlet. She’s got to get out of New York.

Act III, Mar-
May 1967

(i)

New York:

For a moment GEORGE rekindles in JODY the tenderness that
once lay at the heart of their little family project; how it came from a
convention-defying love for each other, and their desire to create a “hybrid
genius”. Bells peal when they recall their marriage and the prospects it held
for America: “Jim’s whip scars will be healed”, sings JODY of the dream she
had. “A thousand countrymen and neighbours will take the nooses from around
their necks and come down from their hangman’s trees.” We
know that she is speaking from experience of the immediate environs of her
early life in rural Texas. SHE AND GEORGE reminisce about the young girl
who was the favourite of magazine editors, and who had a Day named after her at
the New York World’s Fair. Perhaps she will still fulfil their dream. “Not in Vietnam, she won’t,” mutters JODY.

(ii)

Vietnam

In Hué, the MILITARY LIAISON person briefs the orphanage
PRIEST on Viet Cong movements around the city.

(iii)

PHILIPPA gets to know the orphans and their stories and
problems; their ‘between worlds’ predicament
resonates with her. What will Anh do with baseball gloves and a bat sent from
an absent father? What use is the postcard foldout of Cleveland to Phứớng? And these are the lucky ones who have some communication with
their fathers. What are their futures if the Communists win, if the South
wins? We sense she is starting to empathise with the children but she is soon
diverted, asking, “What is my future – as white, as black?” The PRIEST suggests
she could teach, and PHILIPPA imagines what her mother would say to her staying
on in Vietnam; SHE bitterly tells him Jody’s
reaction to her proposed book. The PRIEST is disappointed by her harking back
to her own issues. She doesn’t seem to live by the
premise of her own book, Jungle Saints.

(iv)

Cadenza before attack, PHILIPPA extemporizes a piece
called The Racial Conflict at Home, a
piece attempting to blend the various styles of music in her background, which
begins with one of YOUNG PHILIPPA’s childish pieces forming a core. But does
‘home’ mean the USA or 270 Convent Avenue? The cadenza builds however into a
big ensemble number reflecting conflicting points of view: CHORUS OF WHITES: “Don’t
expect anything to be better when you get back home, ‘Charlie’”; BLACKS: “We
will have equality by any means necessary”;
VIET CONG: “We will drive the alien out.” PHILIPPA grieves that she is still no
closer to resolving her own competing demons.

The MILITARY LIAISON person tells the orphanage staff to
get out of Hué. For some reason, PHILIPPA does not leave, but says she will pull strings with her chaperone to
persuade the military to supply helicopters to ferry the children to safety.
SHE dismisses messages from Jody who is panicking that she has travelled so far
up country and has booked concerts trying to force her home.

(v)
9 May 1967, Sounds of gunfire. The Viet Cong are close. The PRIEST hustles
children to waiting helicopters. PHILIPPA comes to ask if she can help; she has
rounded up some of the children; she has thrown away her music and her
notebooks. The PRIEST says “get out of here”. HE realizes one of the children
is missing. HE asks Philippa to take his place on the helicopter about to
leave, but PHILIPPA rushes off instead. A SOLDIER says, “Father, we have to get
that chopper off.” The PRIEST decides to leave, but says, “Make sure the lady
journalist gets on the last one out.” HE leaves. PHILIPPA comes back with the missing
orphan. There is only one seat left. The SOLDIER straps her in. HE AND PHILIPPA lock eyes; it is clear she had a liaison with
him. The CHILD is placed on her lap. (The CHORUS back at St. Patrick’s
bursts into song.) As the rotor blades start with a blast, drowning out
everything, PHILIPPA begins to sing. At first she cannot be heard, but then -
as the rotor blade sound dies down, SHE is soaring aloft in her own world,
stroking the head of the child in a spirit of selflessness, singing of
long-eluded fulfillment.

Epilogue

The congregation back at St. Patrick’s have now reached
the Agnus Dei (“qui tollis peccata
mundi...”)

Jody says, “I will kill myself. What have I left to live
for?”

Dona nobis pacem

NOTES: still a need
for more obvious musical design; less reminiscence and back-announcing

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About Gordon Kalton Williams

He has devoted himself to understanding the link between words and music and dramatic action, and combines musical sensitivity, command of language and an instinct for the physics of drama.
Australian born, Gordon travels to and from the USA.